That’s What She Said

A variety show featuring kick ass women.

Music, Poetry, Comedy, Performance Art, Storytelling, Dance, Film. Every show is different. Every show is awesome.

Back for another exciting show featuring local and national female artists: That’s What She Said. Joining Cynthia in this one-night-only showcase of awesome are national award winning poets Cecily Schuler and Gigi Frazier from Seattle, the 2010 Oakland Poetry Slam Champion Joyce Lee, films by TV BY GIRLS and a story from their founder, Barbara Wiener, local Fringe Festival favorite Ariel Leaf, the beautiful musical duo of Sarah Bonneville and Holly Bressler, and sexy and sassy burlesque with Queenie Von Curves. During the show, local artist Melina Lee will live paint an art piece to be auctioned off at the end and, as always, Cynthia has new material to share with you.

UP NEXT:

That’s What She Said

Thursday, September 5

Doors at 6pm, Show at 7:30

Cecily Schuler is a spoken word artist who also facilitates writing groups for adults and teens in the LBGTQ community in Seattle. Cecily has co-produced the performance art collaborations MUCK and Gay City’s WordPlay.

Cecily’s work has been published in Fire Stories: Further Thoughts on Radically Re-thinking Mental Illness, (2012) and in multiple chapbooks. Cecily is currently drafting a memoir that uses personal narrative to expand and reshape dialogue regarding neurodiversity, creativity, spirituality and the current paradigm of mental healthcare. Cecily is on a cross country performance tour, returning to Seattle from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont.

Photo credit to Emma Freeman Photography.

Queenie von Curves, the cheeky gal with curves in all the right places, is a cast member of Le Cirque Rouge Cabaret and Burlesque of Minneapolis and guest performs throughout the Twin Cities and United States. She is also a regular columnist with MN-Ups Pin Up Girl Magazine, dance instructor with Playful Peacock Showgirl Academy, producer of Naked Girls Reading-Minneapolis, dancer with Ballet of the Dolls, plus-size model and actress. She enjoys dying her hair outrageous colors, getting into mischief, and eating vegan chocolate chip cookies.

Joyce Lee is the 2010 Oakland Poetry Slam Champion. She has featured
at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Boston’s Cantab Lounge, Oakland’s Gay Pride Parade, and Oakland’s Art & Soul Festival. She is a regular storyteller for NPR’s Show, Snap Judgment.

Joyce recently released her first album, No Country for Honest Womyn, a collaboration of her spoken word and Bay Area musicians and vocal artists. She has been touring with her CD in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Ontario, Holland and Istanbul, Turkey.

Joyce Lee has a semi-humorous, borderline crass and all-the-time blunt approach to writing, performing and living. She is a big presence on and off of the stage and is always honored to be considered worthy of a platform to freely express what is being repressed in so many Black Americans and womyn.

Barbara Wiener is a filmmaker who has been developing work in Minneapolis for over 25 years. She is the founder and executive director of TVbyGIRLS, which works with teen girls making media and trying to change the world. Her work focuses on cultural documentaries and arts. She’s got a bunch of awards like Emmys and Cine Golden Eagle and Sundance and international screenings, but they do not help to pay the bills, so she won’t mention them here.

TVbyGIRLS is a nonprofit organization that works with girls ages 10 to 18 to build leadership, compassionate and collaborative working skills, critical thinking and engagement in social justice and the issues of their communities.

The overarching mission of TVbyGIRLS is to create stories and messages that show creative, compassionate, involved and thinking girls and women. We create work and venues for girls to see their potentials beyond the limitations they are exposed to in the mainstream media. We use the tools of media making and analysis to combat the defeating and limiting messages young people receive everyday.

TVbyGIRLS inspires girls to develop their leadership potential, imagination, intellect and ability to create compassionate change in the world.

Georgena “GiGi” Frazier began writing in her journal at the age of ten and this is where she found healing. Twenty years later she found the strength to publish this first chapbook about her previous intimate relationships, the lessons learned, the good, the bad and all that funny stuff. She has featured at Voices Rising, Liner Notes, Seattle Spit, Seattle City Arts Festival and Ladies First.

Gigi is also a Licensed Cosmetologist and Community Organizer. A part of the Ladies First Collective she has worked hard along side others woman of color to create warm welcoming spaces for other women of color in Seattle. Writing everyday has become a spiritual practice she is faithful to. Her hope is that as she frees herself through her art, others will see it, hear it, feel it, and go after their own freedom.

threesome, painting by Melinda Lee

Melinda Lee is a queer POC (person of color) artist, activist and poet. She is returning to school this fall to pursue a graduate degree in Social Justice. She lives in Minneapolis, but represents her hometown of Long Beach, CA.

She doesn’t like to talk about herself much,
so here is a painting to look at instead.

Sarah Bonneville studied jazz and voice at Berklee College of Music. She founded Berklee’s first ever slam poetry team and took home the Spirit of Slam award their first year at college nationals.

She identifies as an innovative songstress primarily by way of her ukuleles. Her play with language forms a unique lyricism to complement frequent tempo changes.

Ms. Bonneville has also been singing professionally with a travelling choral ensemble called From Age to Age as an Alto II since 2009. While she is not rocking a stage, she is working as a barista, bodyworker and a bicycle courier all over Minneapolis and beyond. She will be accompanied by Holly Bressler.

Ariel Leaf is a performer, lighting designer, writer and director with a degree in Theatre Arts from the University of Minnesota. Recent performing credits include the Ivey Award winning, all-female production of Julius Caeser with Theatre Unbound, Better or Worse (a benefit for MN United for All Families) with Freshwater, and her recent solo story telling show in the MN Fringe: “Died in a Trailer Park/ Woke up a Mermaid”.

Next you can see her performing and working behind the scenes for The Veteran’s Play Project with Footprints (in collaboration with Mixed Blood and Bedlam Theatre) in November, a play created from story circles and workshops with Minnesota veterans from all eras and branches of service. After that you can see her performing in Stop Kiss (Callie) with Fortune’s Fool in January 2014.

Cynthia French is a writer and performer in Minneapolis. She has her MFA in Writing from Hamline University and has performed 15 national poetry slam competitions. Cynthia teaches creative writing, poetry slam, performance and other creative arts in area schools, community centers, colleges and universities. Cynthia is known for her sassy feminism, often using sarcasm and sexuality to take on broad topics such as love, politics and roller derby.